On My First Sonne & Refugee Mother and Child Question: By exploring the language used, explain how the two poets studied express their feelings about the death of a child.

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Name        : Raghav Goyal

Grade        : X B IGCSE

Date        : 22nd April 2005

English Assignment (Graded)

Poetry

On My First Sonne & Refugee Mother and Child

Question: By exploring the language used, explain how the two poets studied express their feelings about the death of a child. 

Ben Jonson writes On My First Sonne from a father’s point of view grieving over the death of his very young son. The title alone suggests which time period this poem is from i.e. it is from the 17th century (1603)- when the poet’s son Benjamin died- through the use of language of the time. This poem has been written in memory of a seven year old child whose death has dealt a great blow to a father. Throughout the poem, the use of religious comparisons and words creates a vivid picture of the thoughts running in the mind of Ben Jonson and we know almost exactly what he feels.

        The inter-relation of father and son in this piece of poetry leads us back to the beginning of the poem. The son, sitting on the right hand of his father, would remind a Christian reader of the Creed, in which the Son 'sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.' What others would interpret from the line-“Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;” is that a father is bidding farewell to his most loved one and his heir.

Again in line 2, when the poet says “My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy”, the poem suggests that Ben had taken his son much for granted as if now he possessed him and so loved him too much. It is ironical as he is comparing the love towards his son as a sin. As mentioned, he now considered that, love, his “sin” which has a deep meaning from a religious point of view. A sin, in the eye of GOD is a bad deed but in this case means a mistake or an error. The language used, hence in relation with religion, exclaims Ben Jonson’s sorrow and love for the child; despite the fact that he is in a way happy that his son has escaped the miseries of life and is in a better place- “For why / Will man lament the state he should envie?” We get this same emotion only developing as the stages of the poem do too. The mixed emotions, rhyming couplets and the intensity of the imagery help understand the moving exploration of a father's feelings on the loss of his son, made all the more emotional by the difference between its affectionate, resigned tone and Jonson's usually satirical and biting comic voice.

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Here we have a poem at once brief, tender, learned, and tough: perhaps the learning may seem to make it a strange tribute to address to a child who died on his seventh birthday from a father’s point of view. On the other hand, the second poem in consideration, i.e. Chinua Achebe’s- Refugee Mother and Child, is from a mother’s point of view about the soon-to-come death or parting of her child from her (being refugees). As for the language, it is pretty much contemporary English but yet creates the same kind of images as those in On My First ...

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